Basketball
Tony Rafaniello
Tony Rafaniello won 511 games – almost 200 more than the next highest total among Staten Island high school basketball coaches – over 38 seasons at Monsignor Farrell, New Dorp, and Moore Catholic. Rafaniello, whose teams won five Staten Island High School Basketball League championships – two at Farrell, and three more at New Dorp – was also the lead architect behind the creation of the SIHSL Tournament, highlight of the Staten Island sports calendar. (Read more...)
Elmer Ripley
Elmer Ripley, a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, won a national tournament as a player with the New York Nationals in 1914 and an NCAA Eastern championship as a coach at Georgetown in 1943. Generally regarded as the best player of his generation, Ripley also coached Notre Dame, Army, Columbia, Yale and Wagner College, and the Israeli and Canadian Olympic teams.(Read more...)
Howie Ruppert
Howie Ruppert was a transformative coach at St. Peter’s High School; at the College of Staten Island, where he won back-to-back CUNY championships and a Metro Coach of the Year award; and at Seton Hall where, as an assistant coach, he helped steer the Pirates’ run to the 1989 NCAA championship game. But one triumph stands above the others. When Ruppert’s 1983 St. Peter’s team won the CHSAA city championship, they became – and remain (Read more...)
Geraldine Saintilus
A two-sport high school star, Geraldine Saintilus was an All-Big East basketball player at Seton Hall, where she set records for scoring, rebounding and steals, and was named New Jersey Player of the Year and Big East Scholar-Athlete of the Year. At Curtis High School, Saintilus led the Warriors to three Staten Island championships and a city semifinal in basketball, and three more Island titles in softball.(Read more...)
John Semerad
John Semerad was a two-sport star at Monsignor Farrell HS – the 1975 Jaques Award winner as Staten Island’s best high school basketball player, and an Atlanta Braves draftee – and at Seton Hall University. An All-Met, All-Big East, All-Northeast and All-ECAC slugger and team MVP, Semerad twice led the Pirates in home runs and RBIs, helped take the Hall to three NCAA Tournaments, and played for the United States team in the 1979 Pan (Read more...)